Welcome to my How to Draw a Red Fire Breathing Dragon. What I am about to tell you is going to be about the fire breathing dragon. This creature lives amongst the smoky volcanoes and high mountains. Each fire breathing dragon has different markings tattooed on their body. The markings indicate the dragon’s name, age, personality, and powers. They can vary depending on the beast. Sometimes, when these creatures change in personality or age, the tattoos will update into different markings. This is how other dragons of the same race recognize each other. Most travelers or villagers find them near the volcanoes, (naturally because of their ability to release fire). Tons of these beasts eat the ashes and molten rock of the volcanoes to keep their fire strong, hot, and this also helps keep their hides a fiery color. The fire breathing dragon also feasts on flesh. They only eat molten rock when they need to produce fire. A gullet full of molten rock can last for fire up to ten hours. This means that the dragon must refill its gullet every ten hours. If they don’t, they cannot breathe any fire. The fire helps them fend off predators or catch prey. The fire breathing dragon can grow up to twelve feet tall and forty feet long. Unlike most dragons, this creature’s wings are built horizontally on its back. They only have three flight fingers that have large thin flaps of membrane between them. Overall they fly up to fifty miles per hour. Like rare heartwarming species of dragons, the fire breathing dragon is gentle and nice towards humans. They have no offense nor prey upon them. Actually, they help humans and nearby villagers for building, transportation, hunting, and protection. Well, I hope this little dragon bio gave you some cool facts about the fire breathing dragon. The image I have drawn took me three hours to color in Photoshop. The line work was done in a sketchbook. I also made the lines more crisper and clearer using Photoshop as well. And by the way, the background was made by this cool arcane brush I found at DeviantArt. The markings were originally done by me. So there you have it, I hope this tutorial will help you out. Enjoy!

How to Draw a Red Fire Breathing Dragon

STEP 1.

In this first step what you will be doing is drawing out the frame of the fire breathing dragon with basic lines and circles. Starting at the head draw two circles and a banana shape. This will be for the head, snout and jaw. Then draw two more circles one being the largest of them all and the other directly on the side of it. The larger shape is for the mid part of the body like the torso, and the smaller circle is for the back end of the beast. Now in front of the torso shape draw two small circles in a vertical position, and in the back draw another small circle for the knee joint. Don't forget the smaller circles as well. When you are done drawing all the round shapes you can then connect the dots as shown above.

STEP 2.

This step is where you will be drawing out the actual outside frame of the fire breathing dragons body. Always start at the head and draw out the jaw and mouth then the tip of the skull, and the out line for the horns. Now continue to draw out the entire body as shown, all the guidelines and circles you just drew in step 1 will help you sketch out the position the body a whole lot better. After you get the outer body frame done as shown above you can draw a mountain shape for the wing that you will be drawing in step 3. Take your time with this step as with all steps to ensure that you get a good sketch laid out.

STEP 3.

In this step you will be drawing slight definition and detail to some areas of the fire breathing dragon. First you can finish off the head by sketching in the face as shown, and draw more smaller spikes that come out along the side of the cheek. Then you can define the dragon wing by drawing it to resemble a bat wing. Finish off the dragons tail with a diamond shape and detail it a bit too. Sketch in the toes on the front foot and back foot and also sketch in some rib lines to create a feel of realism to the dragon. After you draw out the detail through out the body you can proceed to step three and attack your next challenge. Again take your time there is no need to hurry.

STEP 4.

Now here is where we get down to some of the nitty gritty. This is a relatively short step where you will be starting at the head again and sketch out the shape of the eye and draw in the eyeball. Detail inside of the ears with some basic curved lines and add another layer to the back to front part of the neck. Finish off sketching in the toes and claws on the front feet and detail the front leg by drawing the outline for the frill that will be attached to the back of the front leg. Detail the hind legs a bit more and sketch in the part of the fingers on the wings. After you finish detailing the horns on the side of the fire breathing dragons face you can move down to step 5 and see what lies ahead.

STEP 5.

This step contains alot of the nitty gritty that will take you a while longer to complete. You will be sketching in the definition and detail on the fire breathing dragons wings, tail, head, legs, and feet. First what you want to do is sketch out the middle part that sits on top of the dragons head which is like a fish fin. After you draw that out you can detail it by defining the look of it with a light stroke of lines. Next start detailing the wings and take your time doing it. You want to sketch it real good so it actually looks like the membrane that comes with having wings. Look at the image closely and mimic all the sketched lines through out the dragon wing. Do the same thing for the tail as well. This is going to be the most time consuming part of this step because you have to light sketch the definition in both the wing and tail end. Detail the claws that are on every foot and detail the membrane that is attached to the back of the front leg. After you do all that work move to step 6.

STEP 6.

And the final step at last. Here you will be only sketching the fire that comes from the dragons mouth. The best way to do this is enlarge the image and sketch the fire exactly how it's shown. After you finish that the last thing to do is erase all those guidelines and circle shapes that you drew back in step 1. Even though they helped you draw the fire breathing dragon, they are definitely additions that are not going to stick around.

STEP 7.

This is the finished sketch when you are done. Your drawing should look like or resemble the one shown above. This is a Photoshop sketch not the real thing. I actually deleted the layer of the sketch from Photoshop when I went to go color it out. All in all I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on how to draw a red fire breathing dragon, it is one of my favorites.

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